Issue 07
poetry
“Self-Portrait: Today’s Menu”
by Bill Hollands
“Waterford Night” by Laney Shipsey
Shellacked pear on its own
bed of crinkled paper
mailed by an old aunt.
It will never soften.
Ponderous salad of bagged
baby lettuce, two carrot shreds
and an egg. Dressing
glug.
Three precious scallops
huddled on a flat
white saucer, fatly
wrapped in bacon, oil-
slashed.
Choice dessert: butter-
scotch pudding or Jell-
O quivers in a bowl,
farts as you break
the film.
Coke in the fetid
bathroom—just
one more line.
*
Bill Hollands is a teacher and poet in Seattle, where he lives with his husband and their son. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, DIAGRAM, The American Journal of Poetry, Hawai`i Pacific Review, The Account, One, Wildness, and elsewhere. He was recently named a finalist for the North American Review James Hearst Poetry Prize. Find him on Twitter at @bill_hollands.
Lane Shipsey is a filmmaker living in Ireland. www.pxl8.net